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The Adventures of baby Bertie and Olive

Curse of the Colic

I will readily admit that I have spent zero hours researching anything into babies and motherhood.

When my pregnancy started to go horribly wrong, it seemed that every time I purchased something for the babies, karma would come and kick my ass and the situation would lurch to a new low, to the point that I stopped looking at anything remotely baby esque as It simply tempted fate every time I even thought of the little munchkins.

Colic …

I wasn’t really versed in what the hell it was, until a seasoned veteran of the nursing profession advised me Bertie had colic and was going to be a difficult baby to wind.

I knew I had trouble on my hands.

I had always intended to breast and bottle feed, as I wanted to give the other half the option of picking up the slack a little bit and also giving him some bonding time with Bertie.

Bertie was born weighing just 2lb, and when he reached two months of age , he just plateaued and didn’t put weight on for what felt like an eternity. He had fallen below the 9th centile, and the hospital were not going to let me leave until they could see he was growing well.

I knew I had to act fast to get the pudding on my little chap.

We turned to the bottle for most feeds so I could be sure exactly how much he was drinking as I had a sneaky suspicion that he was using me as a dummy and not really feeding as well as he should. I had a dairy load of expressed breast milk so we used that in the bottle with a fortifier for extra calories.

Premature babies get tired very quickly from any type of feeding, especially bottle, so I had to help him out a little bit. I needed a bottle that would give him a faster flow so he didn’t have to work as hard, as well as helping with his colic.

The SCBU nurses recommended Dr Browns Bottles, and I have never looked back.

They have some kind of widget in the bottle that seems to cut down the vacuum and air bubbles and this improves feeding problems such as colic and wind and gas. Bertie fed really well on these bottles, starting off with the Preemie bottle for a slightly faster flow before graduating to the more natural flow as he got a little bigger.

They can be bought in an array of sizes, and they have just introduced some special edition coloured ones, so we will be making a cheeky additional purchase of the blue bottle, as I am a sucker for any marketing ploy like that.

The prices range from £4.50 for the Preemie bottle which holds 60ml to £6.29 for a 240ml bottle. They are also BPA free and come with a vent cleaning brush.